


The Next One Better Kill Me

by PipGirl



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Multi, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 21:46:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8684602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PipGirl/pseuds/PipGirl
Summary: SoSu is in a poly relationship with Hancock and Valentine, and is forced to pay a heavy price for their love affair. Hancock leads Valentine on a mission of vengeance in response.





	

**Author's Note:**

> (Inspired by a prompt at the Fallout Kink Meme that noted that Hancock can be scary during battle, and went on to ask, "What if something really important to him was on the line?...The idea is basically...Sole gets caught by someone.... If it's Hancock, maybe people who hate them dating a ghoul, maybe the same thing but with synths for Nick. But, they get caught, and *censored* up things happen to them...I want to see Hancock rain righteous fury down upon people that hurt what's important to him."
> 
> The original poster asked for a non-cishet pairing, so I've given SoSu a gender-neutral name and used no binary pronouns so you can fill in the blanks as you wish. I hope the lack of identifiers isn't too obvious or jarring (and of course now that I've pointed it out, it will be). I hope it makes the story more enjoyable, though.

Hancock felt his lip twitch, but otherwise held himself perfectly still.

Beside him, Nick didn't bother with such self control, pacing furiously in the tiny space, looking for something he could do to help and failing. He eventually gave up and simply stood to the side, silent, staring at the tattered body on the stretcher as Dr. Carrington worked.

“We shoulda been there,” Hancock ground out, his voice hitching.

Nick didn't blink. Not that he needed to. “I know. But Alex….”

Yeah. Alex hadn't wanted to wait, had wanted to respond to the plea for help immediately. Didn't want to wait until the others arrived. Hancock and Nick had both been away, which just never happened, except this once.

And look. Look at the result, Hancock thought to himself. The only person he'd ever truly loved, unrecognizable beneath the slashes and swelling and bullet holes.

But still breathing. Thank whatever god might exist for that, still breathing.

He glanced sideways again at Nick. He might not be pacing anymore, but Hancock knew him well enough to see that he was still agitated, and still feeling helpless. Well, Hancock didn't feel helpless. There was nothing more he could do here; Carrington had things under control. But that sure as hell didn't mean there was nothing he could do. He jerked his head toward the back exit. “C'mon, Nick.”

Nick hesitated, but followed Hancock as he led them out of the Railroad's hideout. “Uh, John? Where are we going?”

Hancock didn't turn around. “Where do you think?”

Nick grabbed his arm as they reached the surface street. “Hold on. If Alex couldn't handle them, what makes you think the two of us can? We need help.”

Hancock nearly snarled at him. “I don't want help. I want to do this myself.”

“Now, wait just a minute. Just what do you intend to do?” The look of distress on Nick's face was trying to mingle with that look of concern he'd get whenever he was faced with one of his friends on the verge of a bad decision, but distress was winning. He, too, couldn't get the image of Alex's broken body out of his mind, and it was tearing him up.

“The fuck do you think, Nick?” Hancock replied, his voice almost calm. “I'm going back there to make every one of those bastards pay. In full. And then some.” He stalked off again down the street, not caring whether Nick followed but knowing full well he would; Nick loved Alex just as much as he did.

“You're not talking about justice, you're talking about vengeance. I can't help you with that.” Even as he argued, though, Nick kept pace, just as Hancock knew he would.

“Then why are you still following me?”

“I'm trying to talk some sense into you.”

“Are you?” Hancock stopped and turned to face Nick. “Or does some part of you want to make these fuckers suffer, too?”

Nick hesitated again, but when Hancock kept walking, Nick followed.

 

The bastards' den wasn't far, fortunately; its proximity to the Railroad's headquarters had given Alex a chance to escape there before collapsing from blood loss. They were holed up inside an office building. There were no turrets or obvious guards out front, since they used this location to lure in unsuspecting victims. The real dangers were all inside.

Alex had managed to convey as much to Deacon before losing consciousness. The request for help had been a deceit; these people liked to lure in ghouls and synths and then torture them to death as entertainment. No better than raiders, they viewed their victims as subhuman. When they had learned that the Vault Dweller who was saving the Commonwealth was in an “unnatural” relationship with both a synth and a ghoul, they had decided to target Alex personally.

Well. Now Hancock was targeting them.

Hancock and Nick scoped out the building from a block away, but Hancock guessed they were coming up with very different plans.

Nick drew his gun. “I think if we sneak around to the back–”

“You're talkin' like I plan to just kill them all,” Hancock growled.

“John–”

“Save it, Valentine, seriously. I don't want to hear it.” I just want Alex back, he finished to himself, but he didn't need to say it out loud. Nick already knew, because he felt the same way.

Nick's shoulders slumped a little, but he knew well enough that he wasn't going to change Hancock's mind, and there was no way he could stop him. “Fine. Let's just get it over with.”

He felt a little sorry for Nick; this was not his style, but he would never leave Hancock to go in there alone, either. He had really trapped Nick in this.

Oh, well. Too late now.

He slipped around the corner and headed for the building, and if anyone had seen him coming, they would have run.

Happily for Hancock, no one saw him coming.

 

He'd really wanted to just storm the place, but grabbing them by ones and twos made more sense. The pair snuck into the building and captured the assholes as they could, though a few resisted strongly enough that Hancock gave up and slit their throats instead. Once they were done clearing the building, though, they had amassed quite a number of prisoners.

These psychos had cages in the building's basement and Hancock happily swapped out the frightened and injured ghouls and synths inside for their erstwhile captors. Nick busied himself with tending to the wounded victims while Hancock surveyed Alex's attackers. “So, assholes,” he said to them, “who wants to start?”

One of them was brave (or stupid) enough to speak up. “Fuck off, zombie.”

Hancock didn't answer; instead he fired two shots into the man's left foot. The guy fell with a shriek, grabbing at his ruined foot as he writhed on the floor. As he rolled, Hancock fired off another shot into his knee. Behind him, he heard Nick talking to the former captives, gently ushering them up the stairs. He glanced over his shoulder in time to see Nick give him a long look, then follow the freed prisoners out of the basement.

He knew Nick would stay within earshot, in case something went wrong and Hancock needed him; but they both knew the latter would be more comfortable without Nick watching. It was, in Nick's way, a subtle endorsement of Hancock's vengeance. It wasn't much, but he'd take it.

He turned back to the cages. “All right, who's next?”

 

It took Hancock a long, long time to work his way through his victims, breaking fingers here, stabbing kidneys there. No one died quickly, or easily. All the while, he envisioned Alex here, without him or Nick, alone, frightened, in pain; he didn't want to hold the images in his head, but surrounded by the evidence of these lunatics' activities, the torture devices, the bloodstains, he couldn't help it. Alex had been here, suffering at their hands, and he hadn't been here to stop it. At first, every wound he inflicted was an indictment of himself, but eventually, as they pleaded for the mercy they never showed their own victims, he placed the blame where it belonged.

On these bastards.

It wasn't his fault, or Nick's. But they would make sure Alex was their last victim.

He expected to be disappointed when the last one died, but as he buried his knife under the man's jaw, instead he felt...satisfied. It wasn't just that they wouldn't hurt anyone else, but that he had well and truly made them pay for what they'd done to his love. And they'd known it. He'd made sure they knew they'd hurt the wrong wastelander when they'd captured Alex, that they'd crossed the wrong ghoul. To add insult to injury, he'd also made sure to regale them with lurid descriptions of the kinds of things Alex, Nick, and he got up to in private. They were clearly repulsed by the idea of a human fucking– or worse, loving– a synth or a ghoul, and their fury, their anguish at being made to pay for their actions was palpable. They considered themselves, to their last collective breath, to be justified in their bigotry. Hancock, Nick, Alex by association– they were abominations, and had no right to fight back.

Hancock pulled his blade out of his victim's jaw and cleaned it thoughtfully. Maybe he was an abomination, but not because of what that experimental drug had done to him. Maybe he was an abomination because he had enjoyed his revenge so thoroughly.

But Alex sure as hell wasn't. Alex hadn't deserved what these monsters had done, and Hancock was perfectly okay with being the one to mete out justice. Nick might think it vengeance, but no, it was justice.

He left the basement to find all of the other ghouls and synths gone, and Nick sitting in a chair near the stairwell, waiting for him. “It's over.”

Nick looked up at him. “I know.”

Of course he did. No one was screaming anymore.

“Let's go.”

Nick rose without a word, without a question, and the pair of them headed out, back toward the Railroad's hideout. Hancock glanced at Nick a few times, but the latter remained silent. He really hoped that Nick would find a way to be okay with his role in this.

If not...well, Alex had somehow managed to make both of them feel like whole men again. If Hancock, or time, couldn't make it right, Alex would. Somehow.

Still, he raised a hand and placed it lightly on Nick's shoulder, a brief thank you, a brief apology. Nick didn't say anything, but he gave Hancock the tiniest of nods. This wasn't what Nick had wanted, but it's what Hancock had needed, and he got that. He was a hell of a friend, and Hancock was damned glad to have him.

They made their way back in peace.


End file.
